


Pylades

by sunflowerbright



Series: Hotel California [11]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Depressing, F/M, M/M, Swearing, looots of swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-06
Updated: 2013-06-06
Packaged: 2017-12-14 03:50:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/832377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflowerbright/pseuds/sunflowerbright
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"He’s thinking of soft, dark curls slipping through his fingers and soft lips, and Grantaire sneering at him because he’s being an optimistic fool again, and laughing with the others, and he’s thinking of eyes that are seas to drown in."</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pylades

 

**_1832_ **

“Monsieur! Monsieur Fauchevelent!”

He turns in surprise, spotting a dark-skinned lady with wild-curls streaming down her back, her skirts lifted as she runs towards him. He almost gives out a sign of relief as he does not recognize her, does not see her as the police or someone from his past.

Why would she be?

“Excuse me, Monsieur, please allow me…” she finally catches up with him, her full lips settling in a smile. Something about her stirs his memories, but a woman with such exotic and wild looks even he would remember: perhaps he has merely passed her on the street earlier.

He is too distracted, and he does not notice her movements until she has already pressed something into his hands.

“As a thank-you,” she tells him. “For all you do for the people.”

“Madame, I really have no need of a watch. It is kind of you, but you should keep it for yourself,” he tries to hand the object back to her, a bronze pocket-watch that looks new and expensive, carved with intricate designs, but she gently pushes his hands away, shaking her head with a smile.

“If you will not accept it, then give it to someone who may need it,” her voice is low and rich. “They may come sooner rather than later.” And she turns on her heels again, not looking back even as he calls after her.

Valjean stares for a moment, before pocketing the watch and walking on ahead. An odd occurrence: but he quickly forgets about the woman again.

 

 

 

*

 

 

**_present day_ **

 

“This is a nice dream,” Grantaire mumbles, because getting kissed awake is surely only something that happens in movies. And getting kissed awake by Enjolras is definitely only something that happens in his over-active imagination.

Enjolras snorts and then continues kissing him for another few good minutes, until the sun is shining directly into Grantaire’s eyes, and he thinks it’s probably not a dream then, because distractions such as those are usually not present in his dreams.

“Oh,” he mumbles and pulls away from the kiss, blinking lazily. “Um. Hi.”

“Goodmorning,” Enjolras replies, and looks ruffled and slightly confused. “Everything alright? Do you mind?”

“That I was awoken by a golden god intent on sticking his tongue down my throat? Absolutely not,” he grins, but Enjolras is still frowning, even as the corners of his lips twitch slightly in reply to Grantaire’s own wide smile.

“You aren’t dreaming,” he informs him. “You really aren’t.”

“High on morphine then.”

“They’ve actually taken you off the morphine, R.”

“Oh, I know, dear. Dearest? Darling?” Grantaire pulls away again, frowning. “What should I call you?”

Enjolras shoots him a sceptical look. “My name?”

“But everyone calls you by your name.”

“Because it is _my name_.”

“Babe? Honey? Sugar-plum?”

Enjolras buries his face in Grantaire’s shoulder, shaking with laughter and possibly mortification.

“ _Stop_.”

“Strawberry-cake. Marzipan-delight.”

“Are you just describing foods and sweets now?”

“Hmm, I could really eat some pancakes right now.”

Enjolras lifts himself up again and gives him another kiss. “I can get you pancakes,” he says, pressing another to Grantaire’s jaw, and yeah, this really isn’t a dream, because he can feel himself freaking out instead of just leaning back and enjoying this, enjoying the attention – but it’s terrifying, having Enjolras’ sole focus on him, having this much attention from the man he…

“And please breathe?” Enjolras voice cuts through the haze of starting panic, and Grantaire does as he’s asked to, blinking through the lifting fog. Enjolras reaches out and places a hand in his hair, thumb gently stroking at his temple. “Better?”

“Sorry. I. Um. Yeah. Sorry. Still not used to, um, having… well you, in my bed. Here. In real life.”

“Tell me if you need me to back off…”

“Oh no!” Grantaire manfully resists the urge to seize Enjolras by the arms to make him stay exactly where he is: he thinks the other man can rather tell, because he’s grinning down at him, though it fades quietly, replaced with a look of contemplation.

“Maybe we are moving too fast,” Enjolras says then. Grantaire sighs.

“It’s fine,” he tells him. “It really is. See, I’m perfectly fine now, it took you what, three seconds to get me back from me freaking out because I’m a mess? That’s a record, Eponine usually has to slap me or threaten to dye my eyebrows. I dyed hers once, and I don’t think she’s ever forgiven me.” That’s a lie: not about the eyebrows, but… Eponine never hurts him when he’s like this. She knows it wouldn’t work. Usually she just sits and holds his hand, though he never notices that until it’s over. A part of him wants to point out to her (and to Enjolras) that its useless, that he’s going to get like this whether they are there or not, but he can’t make himself say it, because maybe, just maybe, they’d listen and he would have to sit alone with it, and that’s… he’s done that, before. He doesn’t want to think about having to face that again, not right now.

It’s not easier when they’re there, nothing really makes it easier but it is… it is somehow better.

“I don’t really see why she would, that sounds rather evil,” Enjolras has gone back to nipping at his jaw, and it’s really distracting and really, really nice as well.

“Hmm, she is one to hold a grudge.”

“Whereas you would just let it go if she did something like that to you.”

He feels bold, so he lifts his arms and wraps them around Enjolras, effectively moving him closer. “I get distracted more easily,” he says, and gets a mouthful of golden hair as Enjolras shifts.

“ _Blergh_ ,”

“Sorry,” there’s still laughter in his voice – there’s so much laughter in Enjolras’ voice lately, and it makes Grantaire’s chest feel all light and extremely heavy at the same time. And then Enjolras pulls away, and the heavy feeling is about to settle, but he pulls Grantaire up with him as well, and everything is okay again.

Fuck. It is really not good that this single person has such an influence on him. It’s not healthy, it’s not safe, not at all.

Enjolras is kissing him again, and Grantaire really can’t bring himself to care.

Days later he’ll remember this moment for no reason at all, except to have something to cling to.

 

 

*

 

 

**_a couple of days later_ **

 

To say that Enjolras had grown up privileged would be an understatement. He came from a wealthy family – ridiculously wealthy, in fact – had had the best in schools and upbringing, and came from what everyone would say was a _good_ family.

When Enjolras turned thirteen he had to revaluate a lot of what ‘good’ really meant. It wasn’t so much a lightning strike, as it was a slow realization, ending in a sudden moment of clarity, precisely on his birthday.

It wasn’t his father yelling at him or hurting him in any way: it wasn’t his mother being short and snappish, favouring her mood-swings over her son again. It wasn’t him nearly dying, or him regaining memories of a life long-lived, a barricade and a band of school-boys.

He was just a boy of thirteen, whose mind finally felt like it had clicked into place.

It was why he himself wanted to go to Boarding School, getting as far away from his father’s ambitions and plans for him as possible – so he was shipped off, barely a year later, and on his first day ran into a boy wandering bewildered around, just as another boy, dark hair and playful eyes, came running around the corner waving a pair of glasses in his hand. It is a sobering thought, that years later, Combeferre and Courfeyrac are still by his side. A sobering thought, but a pleasing one as well.

Ever since then though, Enjolras had considered himself _good_. But there are things to be said, to be discussed, when standing face to face with a man he had once respected, a man he had trusted, and knowing that this man was at least partly responsible for the awful things happening. And he feels himself coming close to _hate_ for maybe the first time in his life, and it is not even directed at Mabeuf, but at this… entity, this person that has meddled in their life like this.

Actually, it is hate mixed with… with gratitude. Enjolras will admit to gratitude, because if not for this woman’s schemes, whoever and whatever she is, he would never have seen his friends like this again. He would have never gotten properly introduced to Eponine, the girl who died so bravely, whose name he didn’t even know when she fell, would have never met Azelma who would write short messages on everyone’s hands and tell him that she had seen the bottom of life and she _believed_ and he would have never…

He’s thinking of soft, dark curls slipping through his fingers and soft lips, and Grantaire sneering at him because he’s being an optimistic fool again, and laughing with the others, and he’s thinking of eyes that are seas to drown in. And then he has to force himself to stop, lest he go mad. More mad than he already has.

Because Enjolras can feel himself slipping, and for the first time in his life, he wonders if he would have been better off staying, with his family, being safe and having his future already planned out, everything in place for the heir of the family. It is not so much that he is questioning what he is fighting for, he is questioning his own abilities, and he thinks, if Grantaire was here, the man would yell at him for it, like Bahorel had just the night before, would act hurt and defensive to see him like this, would get angry at him.

Enjolras needs that: he is a single-minded mess when it comes to the things he cares about, and it has been so easy to pretend not to care like this for Grantaire, for so long, but now he’s admitted it, has at least somewhat embraced it, and he doesn’t know how to stop now he’s started, no matter how much he’s wringing his hands and bemoaning his own state of mind.

This, Enjolras knows, this is the part where he pulls himself together and gets it sorted. Because it’s what he does, and because it’s what everyone, including himself, has ever known him to do.

And for all that he knows of _her_ (and Enjolras will admit, it is perhaps not as much as he should) he is aware of how persistent and stubborn Cosette actually is.

Which is most likely why she is standing on his doorstep right now, ringing the bell until the button is about to fall off.

And because of Grantaire and because of a past life that shouldn’t be possible, he is trying to do better, to get himself a bit more under control _(because he needs to lead. He needs to be in control),_ and so he opens the door for her.

She doesn’t look angry as much as put-out, a few rain-droplets in her hair from the small storm outside: she looks apprehensive, but determined, and he’s grateful that it’s Cosette, who is calm and who likes Grantaire, and not someone else he has to deal with right now. Her hair is a bit of a mess, and there are bags under her eyes, possibly matching his own, sleep not coming easily right now.

“I want in,” is the first thing she says, as she steps over his threshold. He closes the door behind her again.

“First let me apologise,” he says, and no, he is not gritting the words out, absolutely not. “I spoke… I have been rude to you, very much so, and I have accused you of things I know you didn’t intend. We all make mistakes, I know that.”

Cosette lifts one eyebrow in a perfect arch. “I know why you’ve been acting like I killed your grandmother for the past three weeks,” she says, bluntly, coldly, and he wonders if she is like him in this, if she hides her hurt behind a layer of steel that so few can see through ( _Grantaire. Grantaire can see through it. Or at least Enjolras prays he can, because if he can’t, then he is not even able to imagine how deep his words may cut)_. “I’ve been blaming myself as well, until I decided to… well, to snap out of it. Musichetta asked for my help getting as much information as we can on all of this, and it’s made a lot of things a whole lot clearer. I still don’t understand where Grantaire or Eponine are, or what might happen to them, which is why I want in. Whatever it is you’re going to do, I won’t let you leave me out of it, Enjolras.”

He shifts a little from foot to foot. “What makes you think I’m planning anything that leaves out the rest of you?”

“Because you’re going to do something stupid and dangerous, and you’re not going to waste time arguing it with the others who won’t all want you to risk your life. They’ll ask you to think, to come up with a safer solution, and Grantaire might not have that kind of time left, so you can’t afford it. You can’t afford to lose him. That’s why you yelled at me in the hospital until they almost threw you out. It’s why you would barely even acknowledge my existence the last few weeks. It’s why you nearly attacked me on the street yesterday. Because you love him.”

“Then why should I let you come when I’m not even asking Combeferre or Courfeyrac or any of the others?” he does not sound angry as he says it, but Cosette narrows her eyes and recognizes it for the test it is.

He wants her to convince him.

“Because Grantaire is one of the best friends I have ever had. Because I feel guilty, and I want to make up for it – I’m not one for sitting and wallowing in self-pity about it, I’d rather be out and doing something, and because… because I’m not going to let you go alone.”

Enjolras considers her words for a moment, careful not to look in her eyes. “And your father?”

“My father is not the boss of me,” Cosette snaps, losing some of her composure.

“And Marius?”

“Marius definitely isn’t!”

“I don’t trust you,” Enjolras says, and it comes out as admittance rather than a pure statement. “And it’s because I don’t know you, I realize that. It’s because I didn’t know you back then either – I didn’t even know what you looked like. I don’t like that you came bursting in when it was the least convenient, and I don’t like that you put Grantaire in danger, no matter how much you really didn’t want to. But Grantaire seems to think you’re the Second Coming, Jehan keeps going on and on about your tea, even Bahorel and Eponine likes you, and that can take a while for them to come around. So I want you to prove me wrong: and I wish it were under better circumstances too.”

“You mean circumstances in where, if you are right about me, it wouldn’t be risking _him_.”

She is good, he’ll give her that much.

“Yes,” Enjolras says, trying hard not to show her how prickly he gets at the notion that he is that easy to see through. Cosette gives him a slight smile.

“I want in, Enjolras, and that’s that. I can help, I know I can.”

He bites his tongue to keep from asking, wanting to know how hard she’s still searching for her mother, if she thinks maybe she’ll find the woman with Grantaire. He should be grateful, because even though he does not know Cosette well enough to be comfortable with possibly laying his life in her hands, he also knows that she is risking a lot, and that they need all the help that they can get – help that won’t be a hindrance. Help that is as desperate to get back Grantaire as he is.

What he does not tell her is that some of the others do know. That he had pulled Combeferre aside, after last night, had argued in hushed murmurs until there was absolutely no doubt about his decision and what needed to be done.

And no doubt about what Combeferre needed to do either.

“Alright,” he tells her. “But we’re leaving in an hour. You need to be ready.”

She sends him a winning smile. “I’ve already got everything I need. Unless there is some special requirements?”

Gabriel appears in the doorway from the kitchen. “Bring a rain-coat,” he says. “We’re in for a storm.”

 

 

*

 

 

In hindsight, they had probably all been somehow imagining that Javert was working alone, and that had been a huge mistake. First of all, where would he have been hiding for so long, when basically all of Paris’ armed forces where out looking for the trigger-happy former police-officer with a vendetta against twenty-something males reincarnated from the Nineteenth-century?

So no, the fact that Javert had other people working with him really should not be as big of a shock as it was, when said people stepped out of the shadows with him. Grantaire hardly even had time to struggle as his arms were pulled behind him and tied, but he did get a good glimpse of Eponine kicking one male member of the abduction-party in the groin, before a bag was pulled over his head, and the rest of the going-ons was reduced to noise, and Eponine’s muffled curses.

“Don’t fucking hurt her!” he shouts, getting a mouthful of dust from the bag in return. One of his captors shoves him hard in the back, and he barely manages not to fall over.

“Stop it!” Javert’s voice is loud and booming. “Don’t harm them.” There is movement, he can hear the echo against the stone-walls surrounding them, and Javert’s voice is closer as he speaks again.

“We’re walking, and you are not going to struggle,” he says. “We will not harm you, but our destination needs to be kept a secret. You are already wounded, and you are in no position to fight back and win. Do you understand?”

“I understand that you’re a fucking bastard!” Eponine shouts from somewhere to his right, and Grantaire can’t determine if she’s lashing out because she’s hurt, or if it’s just Eponine being Eponine. He shifts a little, and surprisingly one of his captors shifts their grip as well, holding on just as tight, but differently as if afraid they were hurting him. Huh. Maybe Javert had not been full of bullshit after all.

“You will both be silent,” Javert says, and Grantaire would snort and come with a remark to that, but he is having trouble breathing through the bag, which is not helping his headache in the slightest. And he remembers now – remembers Javert struggling as they had been the one to apprehend him at the Barricade, remembers the haunted look on his face, the sneer as he’d practically ordered them to kill him.

And he remembers that it had been Cosette’s father who had done the deed, had pulled the trigger and let the bullet loose. And maybe that had been it: fear. When he had seen and shot Grantaire, there had been nothing assuring Javert that Valjean was not right around the corner, ready to rob him of his life again.

“Do as he says,” he tells Eponine, and he can feel her glare, it’s not possible, but he _can_ , but she is also tired and exhausted, and possibly hurt too, so she keeps her silence. Their hands are tied behind their backs and they walk, nothing but the sound of the water still running down the walls, and then suddenly blinding light and fresh air that reaches even through the bags still covering them, and Grantaire knows they are outside.

It is eerily quiet, for Paris: there is no sound of cars or people, dogs or fanfares. But they probably couldn’t go through the city with them like this, he supposes: people would start asking questions, and Javert is a wanted fugitive. It’s hard to gather through the thick material, but he thinks he can smell grass, wet after rain and that is _definitely_ birdsong.

_Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore._

He can also faintly hear Eponine stumbling slightly beside him, and cursing at whoever is holding her, because _‘shit, you idiot, you’re supposed to keep me upright, it’s a fucking good thing breathing is an instinct and not something you needed to do manually, you’d suffocate in a second’,_ and he grins, and then realizes that he is probably not freaking out as much as he should be.

He has no idea where they’re going, him and his best friends have been captured by a man who, hardly a month ago, shot and nearly killed him and he is… he’s calm about that. What little anxiety is plucking away at his mind right now is dreams, memories still swimming through his veins like way too enthusiastic parasites, poking and prodding where they can.

He’s apprehensive of what might happen when they reach their destination, but he is not scared, not frightened.

They finally reach wherever it is, and Grantaire thinks they have only been walking for thirty, maybe forty minutes tops: the hood is pulled off his head, and he blinks at the sudden brightness after darkness for so long.

He’d been right. They are in a forest, all lush and green and something out of a _Lord of the Rings_ movie. God, Grantaire hopes they’re in New Zealand, he’s always wanted to go there.

Which isn’t really important right now.

“Welcome to Camp Redundant,” the man who had been keeping a tight grip on Grantaire the entire way says, his voice all too cheerful as he unties Grantaire’s wrists. He finally turns to get a good look at him: he has brown skin and pitch-back, straight hair, longer than even Enjolras’. He’s taller than Bahorel, with broad shoulders and a hard set about his jaw, but a glint in his dark eyes.

“I’m Naveen,” he says, sticking out his hand and Grantaire shakes it because he really doesn’t know what else to do. “Sorry about the rough treatment earlier,” he continues, rummaging in his back and handing them both a water-bottle.

“Oh, but Grantaire likes it rough,” Eponine says, appearing right beside him suddenly, her face a thunder-cloud. She takes the bottle, but doesn’t drink from it. Grantaire thinks they’re probably not going to get poisoned after all this trouble, and gulps almost half of it down, surprised at how thirsty he’d been. It helps the dizziness slightly.

“So do you darling,” he quips back, and cringes as she glares. “Also, Camp Redundant?”

“Naveen, stop dilly-dallying,” a girl with shockingly red hair and almost as many freckles as Marius says: she’s holding a rifle in her hand, and wearing a t-shirt that would make Jehan drool in envy. “We need to get them inside,” she continues, nodding her head towards a building that looks about as old as he technically is: Javert is already half-way there, apparently content in the knowledge that the rest of them would just follow. Grantaire notes the gun in Naveen’s belt, but apart from that and the red-heads rifle, he sees no other weapons.

Of course, that doesn’t mean they’re not there.

“Best to do as they say,” he mumbles, gently taking hold of Eponine’s arm. She doesn’t look happy about it, but she lets herself be dragged along anyway: he supposes she doesn’t have much of a choice, and they’re still tip-toeing around each other, his newfound memories and her earlier confession making everything seem just a little more raw and open.

And they’re among strangers. Armed strangers. Armed strangers where one of them has once tried to kill him – twice, technically, because he remembers Javert at the Barricade, struggling and not caring who he hurt as he tried to get away from them.

The building they’re headed inside looks like something that was once a castle with a moat and everything, but over the years was renovated and turned into something more liveable, but still able to hold hundreds of people. Vines are growing along the walls, a three leaning dangerously close to the south-side, and Grantaire can see someone moving on the flat roof, long black hair flying in the wind. The door is a rusty red, faded over time and chipped slightly, but still sturdy enough to keep unwanted guests out, he figures. The windows are painted, bathing the walls inside in different colours and Grantaire really wishes he could stop up and enjoy the architecture around him, but he is being led down hallways too quickly, until they end up in something like a medical-bay.

“Will you allow me to check your head-wound?” Naveen asks, and Grantaire only hesitates for a second before nodding, especially when he is then given some painkillers.

“It doesn’t look too deep. I don’t think you are concussed either.”

“Head-wounds usually bleed a lot,” Grantaire mumbles, watching Eponine as she stands tense beside him

“Where have you taken us?” she asks, as Naveen finishes wiping the blood away from Grantaire’s head and face.

“You’ll get an explanation in a minute. Are any of you hungry?”

“I’d prefer answers,” Eponine demands, and Grantaire’s stomach is sort of rumbling, but he can’t help but agree with her: plus, they might poison them, despite his earlier self-assurance that they wouldn’t, and then they’ll definitely be getting no answers.  

Naveen leads them down the corridors until they end up in what looks disturbingly like a classroom. A young Asian woman is standing by a blackboard and a projector, scribbling something down on a clip-board, eyes rising in surprise when they enter.

“This is the crowd with Javert?” she asks, her French coming out nearly without a trace of an accent, even better than Naveen’s whose syllables had tilted slightly in a way Grantaire hadn’t been familiar with from the dialects at home.

“Two of them, at least,” Naveen says. “Raphael Martin and Eponine Thénardier.”

“They can introduce themselves, thank-you very much,” Eponine hisses, and the woman chuckles.

“Of course you can,” she says. “I’m sorry, this is all a bit confusing, I know. My name is Ai, and I’d very much like you to sit down and let me explain a few things. Naveen here will help, and after that, we can take you back home. If you want.”

Eponine reaches over and squeezes his hand, and he catches her eyes, nodding slightly. They seat themselves behind a table, Eponine’s arms folded over her chest, glare in place. Naveen jumps up on a table to the side, sitting cross-legged and watches them with interest, his fingers drumming against his knee.

“Where are we?” Eponine asks, not wasting time. Ai smiles slightly.

“This is a safe place for people like us,” she says. “People who have come back, but have… well, fallen out of favour.”

“I’m back in elementary school, I’m getting horrible flashbacks,” Grantaire tells her quite seriously. Ai throws him a perplexed look.

“Are you reincarnated as well?” Eponine asks, ignoring him completely.

“Yes,” Ai says. “Everyone here is.”

“And how many of you are there here?”

Ai throws a look at Naveen who shrugs. “About fifteen right now,” she says. “We’ve all been… rejected.”

“Camp Redundant,” Grantaire says. “Nice. Redundant as in we’ve all been here before, and redundant in that you’ve all been rejected from the ‘cool pool’, so you’re redundant to… what was it, Ana-Maria?”

Naveen flinches slightly at the name, he notices, but Ai keeps a steady gaze on him.

“That’s a bad joke,” she says, shooting Naveen a hard look that only makes the older man smile slightly. “But yes, I suppose that’s the gist of it. We failed our tests, and there was no more use for us. So we had to go into hiding.”

“From Ana-Maria?” Grantaire wonders if he says her name again, three times in a row, will he accidentally summon her? It’s worth a try, later on. “Or from Michael?”

“Both, in a way,” Naveen says. “She is not actually out to hurt us, but we have been made vulnerable. The trouble is, Ana-Maria has brought us back for a reason. We’ve been… given gifts, so to speak. First of all, coping with several lives in our heads. It would drive most people mad, and she makes sure that it doesn’t for us. And because we are supposed to… protect her, she has made sure that we… well, we can only kill each other.”

Eponine’s eyes widen. “Excuse me?”

“Only someone who has been reincarnated as well can kill another reincarnated person,” Ai explains. “This includes traveling back in time and killing yourself, or killing yourself now, and Michael can kill you as well. Ana-Maria however, can’t. Or she won’t – she never has, as far as our research tells us.”

Well, that’s another point in Ana-Maria’s favour, Grantaire supposes.

“But this Michael has?” Eponine’s voice would probably be trembling slightly if she wasn’t who she was, he’s sure. She sounds angry about it, more than anything else.

“Also,” Grantaire adds. “Did you just say time travel?”

“Michael picks us off like flies,” Naveen says, going for Eponine’s question and ignoring Grantaire’s inquiry completely, which, rude. But the answer is distracting enough in itself.

“Lovely,” he mutters. “So I’m guessing these two aren’t exactly friends?”

“Michael and Ana-Maria have been at odds for thousands of years,” Ai explains. “Michael does not have the power to reincarnate people, though he has… other talents. Ana-Maria chooses specific people and sort of… well, to put it in metaphorical terms, she stores us away until our, you can call it souls or whatever you believe it is, are ready to come back, and then… well, then we’re a part of the system. We’re her soldiers, her bodyguards. She’s made it so that we can’t be killed by ordinary people as soon as we enter our second lives, and in every life after that. There are very few exceptions to this rule. The tests… the things she puts us through, they’re in place to make sure that we can handle this, that she can trust us. If we fail… we’re ripe for the plucking. Because Michael needs us.”

“Right,” Grantaire can feel something akin to horror settle in his chest. “So if we fail the test, or before we’ve even started them, Michael will try to make us choose his side, because he needs us to kill the others standing between him and her.”

Ai looks at him. “Exactly,” she says.

“And that’s why you’re hiding. Because Ana-Maria can’t protect you, or won’t protect you, and he is going to, what, bribe and offer you sweets until you go out and kill Winston Churchill reincarnated?”

Naveen smirks. “Maybe not Winston Churchill,” he says. “Few people who have been famous and very noteworthy through history are actually reincarnated. A Winston Churchill look-alike would be too easy for Michal and his minions to spot, I suppose.”

“So someone who just barely misses becoming historic,” Grantaire says, and his voice is not dark and bleak and angry, no sir. “Like a group of youngsters fighting for a better world and dying in their attempt.”

Eponine’s shifts uncomfortably beside him. “What about other people?” she says. “Ana-Maria or whatever it is, she doesn’t have to reincarnate our parents to make sure we come back – Jehan has different parents, Combeferre does as well. Why are _mine_ back?”

Ai looks confused, but Grantaire knows what she’s talking about immediately: no-one who wants good people to fight for them would make the Thénardier’s come back, not a chance. Gavroche he can definitely understand. Eponine as well – Azelma did not deserve whatever life gave her back then, and it is only fair that Eponine and Gavroche should get their sister now as well. But their parents?

“I have been reincarnated with my brother every single time,” Naveen suddenly says, his voice low and sad. “And every single time he has tried to kill me. I suppose there are some things even she cannot control, when it comes to this.”

Grantaire looks at him. “How many times have you been… coming back?”

“My first life… you would date it around 500 BC, I think. I was there when the _Upanishads_ were first collected and written down together. I drowned as a boy of sixteen, trying to save my neighbours little girl from the same fate. And then I was there again when Vasco da Garma sailed past on the Indian Ocean… was that 1498 or ’99? My brother ran me through with a sharp stick, like the ones we’d make as small boys and would pretend were swords. I saw Michael for the first time in 1947, when India finally became independent again, after years as a colony to the British Empire. I was married. I had a child of six, a boy. My brother killed him trying to get to me. When I came back again, so shortly after my last time, I failed my test on purpose. I will have her ask no more of me.”

Grantaire was staring at the man in shock, Eponine mirroring his look, her mouth hanging open.

“You…”

“Oh, that’s fucking great,” Grantaire hisses, snapping back into reality. “She keeps bringing us back, huh? It’s like the fucking Hotel California, we can check out anytime we like, but we can never leave!”

“Naveen is perhaps not the best example,” Ai says. “He is one of the few who has come back so many times.”

“Has she ever explained to you why?” Eponine asks.

Naveen smiles without humour. “I’ve never met her.” He says. “I don’t know of anyone who has.”

 _Mabeuf has_ , Grantaire thinks, but says nothing. _Or he says he has._ And possibly Ella had as well, but he’s not really sure about that. Her ramblings had been incoherent. But she had seemed scared.

But Mabeuf. Mabeuf who had not been reincarnated, who had been granted… what, immortal life instead? How did that work?

“You mean… none of you know who she is?” Eponine asks, her voice sceptical. Ai and Naveen exchange a look.

“She has people to communicate with us for her. Or to communicate with us, before we… become rejects, to put it bluntly,” Ai looks upset at the very thought, he notices now.

“What about you?” he asks. “How many times for you?”

“I was a servant bringing food and water to the workers building the Great Wall of China,” she says. “As far as I know, I have had no other life aside from that and this one now.”

“The tests,” Eponine has gripped hold of his hand again. “What are they? How do we know if we’ve passed them or failed?”

“It’s different,” Naveen says. “Time and time again. The first time is always the most difficult: mostly she will leave you until Michael finds you, and if you prove that you can withstand him, you have passed. Sometimes it will be just a choice between doing good or being selfish, being a coward. I was asked to either shoot an innocent young soldier or let him go free. I released him and was placed in prison myself. Her Recruits came and got me out. That was the third life.”

 _Four_ , Grantaire thinks. Four different lives, battling in his head. It must be awful: four lives, and four tests. And then he remembers Jehan.

“Can Michael bring back spirits?” he asks, and he can feel Eponine perk up – someone must have told her. Most likely Jehan: he was always very likely to go to Eponine with his problems, right after Combeferre or Courfeyrac. Or Grantaire himself, he supposes.

“He can create hallucinations, yes,” Ai says. “That includes taking on the form of the dead.”

“Jehan passed his test,” Grantaire says, turning to Eponine. “I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. This means Ana-Maria will… protect him, right? I mean, he has her favour or whatever? He won’t be left on the street until Michael can come find him and pick him off?”

“Are we here because we failed?” Eponine cuts in, staring at Ai. “I mean… if that’s what this place is for…”

“As far as we’re aware, you haven’t been faced with your tests yet,” Javert’s voice sounds from the door-way, and Grantaire actually jumps a little, because every single time he’s heard that man’s voice shit like getting shot or thrown into a wall or blinded and taken to some weird forest has happened. He’s getting jumpy again, nerves all frayed. Great.

“We brought you here because you were in danger,” he continues, moving into the room: Eponine tenses up again. “One of Michael’s men was gaining in on you, and he wanted your pocket-watch. We couldn’t let him have it.”

Grantaire frowns. “My watch? What did… what, he wanted my _memories_? That’s… weird. And slightly stalkerish.”

“Memories hold great power,” Javert says and sounds about a thousand years old as he says it, and it really cannot be a sign of good mental health that Grantaire feels so unapologetically sorry for the man. “In holding them from you, Michael could have much more easily manipulated you over to his side. Not to mention there may be things hidden in there, things that even you didn’t know: fragments of what happened in the process of you coming back, for example.”

Naveen nods. “He’s been searching for ways to copy what Ana-Maria does for a long while. He hasn’t succeeded fully. The results of his work are… horrendous. Grotesque.”

“Fucking zombies,” Grantaire says, and Eponine lets out a sound that’s somewhere between a laugh and a _‘you’re fucking kidding me’._

“Ai, I need to speak with you,” Javert says then, class apparently dismissed. “Naveen, could you take them to the library?”

“Of course,” Naveen hops down from the table, nodding his head towards the door. “Shall we?”

“Are we going to be blind-folded again, or is the library not super-secret?” Eponine asks, apparently still sore about that. Not that Grantaire can really blame her – he’s still feeling lightheaded, though that may be the wound. Or just this situation in general, really.

“The library is very secret,” Naveen tells her gravely, and Grantaire thinks he can see it, that this man had been a father once. Maybe he even was in this life as well. “But you get a pass because you’re French, and I like the French.”

“Yay,” Grantaire mutters and almost absentmindedly sticks his hands in his pockets, fingers brushing the edges of a worn match-box. He tells himself it’s going to be fine.

It turns out that _library_ is a code-word for _room with all the crap we can find_ thrown into it. Granted, a lot of it are books and papers, texts and documents that look so old they’ll fall apart if he as much as breathes on them, and Grantaire instinctively moves more carefully, afraid to ruin anything. There are ancient paintings hanging on the walls, a skeleton of what looks to be a giant crocodile hanging from the ceiling, a faded old globe of Earth that doesn’t look to be completely Geographically correct and a cage with a hissing snake of all things: just to complete the exotic but creepy look, Grantaire thinks.

Naveen leads them through corridors made of bookshelves so tall he can hardly see the top of them, like mountains of knowledge half hidden in clouds, and it isn’t until they reach a section with a make-shift tag marking _1750-1850_ that Grantaire realizes they’re staring at things that have belonged to… to people like them.

And this section is partly reserved for _them_ in particular.

“Oh,” Eponine mutters, walking forward and moving her fingers over a green shawl, the colour faded into an ugly brown at places, almost sheer in others. “This was… this was mine.”

“There’s as much as we have been able to find,” Naveen says. “I’ll give you some time alone – I’ll be by the crocodile, just call if there is anything you need.”

Grantaire hardly even registers the other man leaving, because he’s been staring fixedly at the painting peeking up behind one of the boxes, a young man standing between two trees in a field, arms stretching, back bent and neck curving as he looks directly out at the viewer, mouth curved in a soft and playful smile that Grantaire has seen all too often.

It’s Jehan, and Grantaire remembers painting it, remembers the young man blushing and stammering, how much he’d complimented the done work, how he’d told him of a café and about his friends, and that Grantaire simply had to come with him and let him introduce him to the others. And Grantaire had made vague, empty promises that he would not have kept, had the young man not come directly to his door the next night and practically dragged him all the way there.

It’s a different story from how he met the others in this life, he supposes, and it doesn’t matter one width. He met them back then and he met them now, and he is quite possibly going to have to see all of his friends getting picked off like flies. Again. And maybe one more time after that. And then again. And a fourth, just to even it all out.

Fate is a charming fellow like that.

“Do we know anyone called the Bishop of Digne?” Eponine asks, and Grantaire comes back to the here and now. She’s flickering through an old note-book, one of those big and heavy ones, filled with neat, even scribbling’s.

“That’s a title, not a name.”

“It doesn’t _say_ his name,” Eponine snaps the book shot again, glaring at Grantaire. “What the hell is happening with you?” she asks. “You’re being all…”

“What?”

“All… _not_ -you.”

He sighs. “I have always admired your way with words, ‘Ponine.”

“I will go and find that snake and I will strangle you with it.”

“Sorry,” Grantaire mumbles, staring down at his hands, away from the painting. “I’m still a little…” she goes over and puts her arms around him, and he doesn’t finish his sentence.

“It’s okay,” she says. “At least the others will be very glad. We’ve all been so worried – _don’t freak out_ , I know you hate it when I say that, and no, we’re not discussing you being a poor little lamb all the time, we’re your friends and we love you, and we get anxious when you’re going through tough times. Okay? We’ve all been worried, and we just want what’s best for you. And I’m… I think I’m happy that you remember. Even if you aren’t happy about it. And I know that Enjolras is going to be happy about it too, because I know it has been really bothering him, like _really_ bothering him that you didn’t remember.”

It’s almost as painful as getting shot, Eponine mentioning Enjolras like that: he doesn’t want to think about it, but he can almost feel it, the other man’s hand in his (how many fucking times had their fingers been intertwined during these last few weeks?) and the smell of gunpowder and death filling the air around them. He can feel it again, what he’s been feeling too often even without the memories, pressure points where bullets entered a body that looked like this but wasn’t his, wasn’t the same body as now, and it’s _not possible,_ and he didn’t want this, any of this. It’s too much, and he’s sitting on the ground, clinging to Eponine who has half-way caught him in his collapse, and she’s clinging back and mumbling soothing things, and it’s too much.

It’s like the anniversary of his parents death, when she would sit up with him all night long, a lone candle on the floor, keeping it alive with him until the sun stood up. He had done the same thing, he remembers, a little boy living with aunts and uncles in a very different France, being passed around between supposed family like he was some kind of commodity or a chore to be had. Uncle Phillipe had been living with a man named Etienne, he remembers, who’d taught him to juggle and actually given him another candle when he had discovered Grantaire, sitting all alone in his room, dim light almost flickering out.

He’d still been alone then. Alone. _Alone_ , unaccepted and it had been blinding to suddenly be with so many brilliant people, stars orbiting the sun _(the_ sun _, the sun, the sun)_ and he had had so much again and yet was left with nothing at all.

He’d _abandoned_ them.

Eponine pulls away when his shaking lessens, looking him in the eyes.

“It’s okay,” she says. “It’s… you know I’d never lie to you. So when I say it’s going to be okay, it’s the truth.”

“When did you become such an optimist?” he blurts out, and Eponine, of all things, actually blushes slightly.

“It’s easier to see things in a positive perspective when you have someone constantly assuring you that it is worth it,” she says then, and it makes a lot of sense. Grantaire narrows his eyes.

“Are you saying I’m pulling you down because my glass is half-full?”

“Grantaire, your glass is always empty.”

“Metaphorically or literally?”

She smiles slightly. “Maybe both?”

“You’re an ass. Also, _who_ is making you see things differently? Did you hook up with someone? It’s not the pizza delivery guy, right? I mean, he’s been coming around a lot, but we’ve been eating a lot of pizza, _please_ tell me it’s because you still love Italian food and not because you have a crush on the pizza delivery guy, because he’s cute enough but he didn’t laugh at my Karl Marx joke the other day, and even Enjolras cracked a smile at that one, and I really can’t…”

“It’s not the pizza delivery guy,” Eponine interrupts, sounding exasperated. “It’s Combeferre.”

“I’m _fainting_!”

“Grantaire!”

“This is _too cute!”_

 She’s blushing even brighter now, but her head is held high in a dignified manner. “ _Grantaire!”_

He smiles at her. “How long has this been going on?”

“Just about a day, really? Or technically two. I was with him and um… we’d just… well, we were together almost the entire day, and then in the evening I tried to get a hold of Gavroche and couldn’t and the rest as they say, is history, so.”

“So. You’re forgiven for not telling me, then. If you’d kept it a secret from me for longer I would have had to dig out your spleen with a rusty spoon.”

Eponine makes a face. “R, seriously.”

“Hey, don’t start, I heard you telling Enjolras that’s what you would do to him if he wasn’t careful.”

She ducks her head, but her smile is very smug for someone apparently ashamed. “I was trying to take care of you. Someone needed to give him the shovel-talk.”

Grantaire has to swallow past the lump in his throat before he can speak. “Right,” he says. “Thank-you.” But that’s actually his job. Eponine shouldn’t… shouldn’t have to. The worried look comes back on her face as he falters.

“I’m fine now,” he says. “I’m fine.”

He’s lying and she’s probably going to yell at him for it, but then an alarm goes off, breaking the near-silence around them, bright, red lights flashing across the halls. Naveen comes careening around the corner, already out of breath. His eyes are wide, but his smile is almost excited.

“Sorry to interrupt, but it seems we’re under attack,” he says.

 

*

 

Musichetta is lying in the middle of their sleeping cuddle-pile when her phone rings, and isn’t that just typical: she needs to wrestle with Bossuet’s arm, which isn’t only thrown over her shoulder, but also clinging to Joly on the other side, and then slide her legs out from under Joly’s: it takes her about five seconds to stop trying to do it without waking them, and she ends up slapping Bossuet in the face with a pillow, and nearly elbow Joly in the ribs, but at least she finally gets to her phone.

“Yeah,” she mumbles, voice groggy with sleep. “Who is it?”

“Mademoiselle Laurence?”

“Is me,” she confirms, shifting so she isn’t squishing the life out of Bossuet completely, and trying to ignore Joly’s insistent pokes to her shoulder. “And you are?”

“Your employer, Mr Franklin.”

Her employer? “Oh,” she realizes. “For the… um, the shop… _oh_ , where the hell have you been?”

To hell with manners, apparently. It’s too early for this.

“Mademoiselle, you also know me as Mabeuf.”

Musichetta pulls the phone away from her ear and stares at it.

“Oh,” she mumbles, looking at Joly and Bossuet. “We should have probably seen that coming.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> This part has a lot of world-building in it, but the main drive of this story is still the characters, who I am still trying to focus on very much, even when ‘explaining’ a lot of things.


End file.
